Cuming County

New Towns in the West

St. Catharine a new town in Cuming County, Nebraska, has lately been changed to Manhattan, and is just now attracting a large emigration from this State.

A German Colony from Columbus, getting sick of Know Nothingism at the Capital, have just left for this land of promise.   Steamers are loading at Zanesville and McConnellsville for this far off region, with all the freights and passengers they can carry.  Some have made their first trip and returned for more.

The County is thus described by one who resides there:

Cuming County abounds with beautiful streams of water, of which the Elkhorn River is the principal, running in a south easterly direction nearly through the centre of the county.  On the east line, is Logan Creek, about half as large as the Elkhorn, and between these two is Cuming Creek, one of the clearest and purest streams of water that can be imagined.

The prairie is generally level, though in some places slightly rolling, and everywhere susceptible of easy cultivation.

The timber—consisting of yellow cottonwood, black walnut, oak, ash and elm --  is more plenty than in many portions of the Territory.

St. Catharine is a most beautiful site for a town, commanding a view of the surrounding country, for some fifteen or twenty miles in extent.  Southwest of the town – with its ever devious yet graceful windings – flows the Elkhorn, but has been cut off by a dam made by Beavers, and on the east is Cuming Creek.  All these streams are skirted by fine groves of timber.

Cuming County certainly embraces one of the best farming countries in the Territory.

“Cuming City,” an embryo town 30 miles north of Omaha, the Capital of the Territory, on the Missouri, is fast looming up in importance.

The site is unsurpassed in beauty, by any of the many attractive points in Nebraska, being a little way back from the broad Missouri on a high table of land, from which bluff rises gradually and uniformly, overlooking in all directions, one of the most fertile, healthful and beautiful regions of country to be found in any portion of our Territory.

There is plenty of excellent timber and stone for building and other purposed in the immediate vicinity.  The landing for steamboats is as good as at any other point on the river, and a ferry boat always in readiness.

The excellent country by which it is surrounded and the energy and enterprise of the hardy settlers who are already there, and of the men whose attention is being attracted in that direction, must insure to Cuming City a rapid growth, and in a short time, make it a place of no inconsiderable importance.

Plain Dealer – May 16, 1856